A home monitoring system is an important feature in any residential building. This system can provide a user with varied monitoring facilities. One such monitoring facility includes a fire monitoring system. Usually, to provide fire safety, the home monitoring system uses various smoke detectors installed at various locations in a house. A smoke detector detects presence of smoke at a location where it is mounted and then sounds an alarm. In order to ensure maximum safety, it is important that the smoke detector detects the smoke and sounds the alarm very early.
There are a number of different smoke alarm systems. One such system interconnects the smoke detectors together. These interconnected smoke detectors are mounted at different locations in the house. The interconnection is in the form of a hard-wire connection and enables one smoke detector to signal other smoke detectors when it detects smoke.
Another system issues vocal instructions on what do when smoke is detected. The recorded voice message is more effective than the alarm, especially for elderly people and children, and can guide people out of the house. However, the vocal smoke detector plays the recorded voice message only at the location where it is mounted. In this case, the recorded voice message may not be audible at other locations in the house. Moreover, the single voice message played by the vocal smoke detector may not pertain to the location of the smoke. In other words, the same voice message may not be applicable to different locations of the fire in the home. Hence, is not able to guide people out of the house effectively.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.